


Memories Can't Wait

by fixyourheartsordie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, The Magnus Archives Season 3, Violence, miss richardson i love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25323463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fixyourheartsordie/pseuds/fixyourheartsordie
Summary: Helen Richardson may not remember who she is, but she remembers what's happened to her. Maybe talking about it will help.
Relationships: Helen Richardson & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Helen Richardson & Michael Shelley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Memories Can't Wait

**Author's Note:**

> idk i love helen and i am very angry that jon is so mean to her and i wrote about it
> 
> never written fic before but i guess there's a first time for everything!

I feel...wrong.

It’s a bit hard to describe. Do you know that feeling you get when you walk into the kitchen, but you forget why you’ve gone in there, and for a brief moment, you’re a bit confused, a bit disoriented, a bit worried you’ve begun to lose it? That’s how I feel, all the time. That’s my existence. That’s me. Whoever I am.

I think I used to remember, though the phrase “used to” is quickly becoming a foreign concept to me entirely. Time in here doesn’t work, not in any way you want it to, at least. Parsing out what was, what is, what’s going to be...that kind of certainty becomes an unaffordable luxury to whoever’s stupid enough to find themselves trapped in this place. At least I can be sure enough of that: I was a fool. Am a fool. Whatever.

I remember hope. Thinking there was a way to leave, a way to navigate this place somehow. Or was that denial? Doesn’t matter, I suppose. However long I spent walking through this godforsaken hall, peering around corners, backtracking and rerouting, trying to gain any sense of geography, trying to ignore the bulging doors and shifting walls and screams and laughter and that _horrific_ carpet…it was long enough to leave me without hope, or denial, or whatever you want to call it. I gave up trying to make sense of a realm that exists outside of the bounds of logic and reason. I don’t think this place likes when people give up. It needs us just broken enough, just terrified enough. It needed to give me a bit of false hope to keep me ripe. Maybe that’s why I saw him.

I remember relief. Seeing someone else, anyone else, felt like a gift. I _heard_ others, heard what this place was doing to them, but I never saw them. Always behind the next door, around the next corner. But he was there. He was real. I saw him and he saw me. Maybe we could find a way out together, find a way to fight this. But relief can so quickly become disappointment. Hope may have flickered somewhere deep within him, but it was far too obscured by anger, suspicion, and hatred for it to have any meaning.

I remember reality. The world outside. He reminded me of that. He told me it used his face as a mask and walked the earth in his place, taking others the way it took him, the way it took me. And he is forced to watch. He was so full of hate. At this place, for taking everything from him, at me, for not being able to help. But above all else, he hated the one called the Archivist.

I remember the Archivist. The one he cursed with such vitriol. He said the Archivist trapped him in here. He was a sacrifice, one made without hesitation, but this was not the Archivist that I remembered. When I told him the Archivist had tried to save me, the anger I so foolishly thought I had known the depths of made its vast presence known. He may have held hatred for me once, but I had quickly fed the flames of that hatred with coals of envy and resentment. The walls shuddered with his fury, his chest heaving as his gritted teeth contorted into a sickly grin.

I remember his plan. He may have had no control over the will of this place, but he knew that it could not resist such a delectable source of fear. I begged for him to stop, told him that the Archivist may be able to free us. He ignored me, that grin plastered to his face as he watched in anticipation of a conclusion I didn’t care to experience.

I remember killing him. I remember feeling no pain as I smashed the mirror and grabbed the largest shard I could find. The mirrors had never broken before. Maybe this place wanted him gone. I couldn’t tell if the walls rumbled in approval or repugnance as he slumped to the floor. I remember standing over his body and wondering if, through this single act, I had relieved him of his fate and condemned myself to my own, my quickening pulse a grim reinforcement that I continued to live, trapped in this maddening corridor. The shard had melted from my hand before I could entertain any alternative.

I remember losing myself. The walls roaring and the floor pulsating as this place was forced to shed the skin it had grown so accustomed to. I tried to run. Once a fool, always a fool. I sank, darkness engulfing me and taking everything from me, slowly, painfully. Self stripped of self and identity stripped of meaning. I am this place now, this place is me. Who I was means as much as who I am or who I will be--nothing but an extension of this place, another tool in its arsenal. Just a fool who took the wrong door out. At least it left me with that much.

I remember seeing the Archivist once more. I remember wanting to cry out for help, to beg for him to save me. All that came out was a twisted disfiguration of my thoughts. It took all that I had, all that I knew, and made me a passenger in the mockery it made of the person I once was. Or may have been. I can’t remember much now. Only that I feel wrong.

At least it helps the Archivist now. Perhaps to give me another sense of false hope to cling to, more fear to feed off of, but it’s not like I have a choice. I don’t believe that the Archivist is evil. I may not remember why, but I know that he helped me once, and perhaps he will again. I don’t believe that he’s evil. But I do know that he hates me.

I try to tell myself that he does not. That he hates this place, and the skin that it wears. But are we not one and the same? It is my skin, or at least it was. And they are my thoughts, distorted as they are. I know how he feels when he sees me. The suspicion, the rejection, the bitter loathing. All too familiar. It’s not my fault that I was a fool. But he hates me all the same.

I help him as much as I can. He must know that I’m in here. He must know how to save me. He must know how badly I need his help. He knows everything.

Doesn’t he?


End file.
